Yep! I saw it earlier this week. I was really looking forward to it and I had high hopes for it but when I finally saw it, it kind of shocked me how... regressive? it was, to be honest. Conversion therapy is a very delicate subject and it wasn't handled quite as well as it should have been, particularly because it places a very heavy emphasis on unhealthy homosexual relations (it features a pretty explicit rape scene that drags on FOREVER and is VERY poorly handled afterwards, ie it doesn't seem to affect the victim much afterwards and is basically only used as a plot device to out him to his parents) and never allows for any on-screen depiction of healthy intimacy between men Spoiler: SPOILER ALERT (even at the end, when the main character has a boyfriend, they don't even hug or kiss or whatever, the film remains very distant) which kind of reinforces this idea that homosexuality = suffering = not something you want for your children. And considering the director has said he didn't make this film for queer audiences but for parents of queer kids (which I find a bit problematic in itself, you can make films for parents of queer kids without using a topic so painful and personal to the lgbt community like conversion therapy? but that's another matter) that is the last message the director should be sending... He definitely doesn't endorse conversion therapy with this film but I don't think this film is particularly helpful towards lgbt acceptance at all.
i don’t know but i don’t think either of those was necessarily the case. i genuinely think the director meant well and thought he was doing something good, but just was completely clueless about how to treat the topic respectfully. being outside the community himself, i don’t think he fully comprehends the delicacy of the subject matter and how to display homosexuality in a way that is actually helpful to us. i think it has less to do with his political background and all the more with just cluelessness and not enough input from actual lgbt people when making the film. it kind of feels like he barely consulted lgbt people and just assumed that because he was basing it on a book by a gay man who underwent conversion therapy, it would automatically be okay. it’s not explicit anti-gay propaganda or anything... it’s just a very poor handling of the subject, and it is painfully obvious that the director is straight and that the topic is fairly meaningless to his personal life (i believe i read somewhere he made this film because he is interested in how institutions work? that’s a very detached and impersonal way to get into this topic) and i genuinely think treating a delicate subject like this in that way is harmful rather than helpful.
